For this Bison Books edition, James Welch, the acclaimed author of Winter in the Blood (1986) and other novels, introduces Mildred Walker's vivid heroine, Ellen Webb, who lives in the dryland wheat country of central Montana during the early 1940s. He writes, "It is a story about growing up, becoming a woman, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, within the space of a year and a half. But what a year and a half it is!" Welch offers a brief biography of Walker, who wrote nine of her thirteen novels while living in Montana.

"Describes a young woman’s emotional and spiritual awakening as she confronts the disappointments and marvels of love. . . . Walker’s heroine recognizes that love, like winter wheat, requires faith and deep roots to survive the many hardships that threaten its endurance"—Belles Lettres

"You are either a Mildred Walker enthusiast or you are missing one of the best writers on the American scene."—Philadelphia Inquirer

"Mildred Walker writes with distinction, and this penetrating story of a young girl's struggle to understand her parents and herself is a sincere, honest, and substantial novel, superb as a picture of family life and as a view of one part of rural America."—Los Angeles Times

"Miss Walker's writing glows with a simplicity that is admirably suited to the land she loves and to the characters she portrays."—New York Times

"The vivid sense of place and region are themselves major achievements."—Saturday Review of Literature

"The universality which is the prerequisite of good books is here. Mildred Walker can make you know and feel the earth and the wheat. She can evoke almost tangible heat and cold."—Book Week

"The Walker novels of most interest are her four Montana novels, of which by far the best known is Winter Wheat. . . . With deep appreciation for Walker's use of the image in the novel, as well as her carefully observed descriptions of daily life, James Welch was surely correct to call it 'a classic novel of the American West' in his introduction to the novel."—Susan Armitage, Western American Literature